Lose Weight Super Easy

As quickly as possible: what is your weight loss plan?

Quick answer: 1500 calories a day, and LOTS of protein to keep hunger away. No exercise program beyond such activity as day-to-day life demands.

Are you selling anything?

No.

Then why this page?

Because I've wrestled with weight all my life and hated being fat. I worked damn hard for years to take the weight off but rarely got anywhere. I know what it's like to feel like there are no answers. So once I figured out something that worked for me, and far easier than most of what I'd previously tried, I wanted to help other people in the same boat.

Are you a doctor?

No, just a person who is delighted to find the pounds coming off, and wants to share what he's figured out. Do check with your doctor if you're concerned about trying this.

So is this a fad diet?

I don't believe so; I'm not suggesting special foods with magical properties. All I'm recommending is taking in fewer calories than you burn, and a way to make it a pretty comfortable process. I still recommend following the general principles of nutritional balance, but leaning into protein to make weight loss workable.

Okay, point by point. Why 1500 calories?

Consider it a nice round number. They say the average man needs 2500 calories a day just to maintain his weight (a little more if you're heavy-set), and the average woman needs 2000. Consume less on an ongoing basis and you lose weight. Maybe 1500 calories is too aggressive/ambitious for your purposes, which is fine. Make it 1800 calories or whatever best suits you. (Myself, I rarely hit 1500 exactly, but I usually keep it below 1600.)

One way or another, it takes a calorie deficit of 3500 calories to lose a pound. Expect weight loss to be a gradual thing; it's hard to lose more than two pounds a week. On the other hand, that's 100 pounds a year, assuming it's sustainable.

Aren't you constantly hungry?

Surprisingly, no. Our bodies' hunger signals seem to be adaptable, and my body figured out after a couple days of low-calorie that it needs to get used to tapping into fat reserves. My body's mostly fine with it. But high protein helps a lot too. And, on the days I am actually hungry, I eat a little more.

About protein, why protein?

Protein is a source of calories too -- about as dense as carbohydrates (roughly 4 calories per gram, while fat is about 9 calories per gram) -- but protein takes a long time to process. Rather than give you a spike of energy and then you come down, it will give you a steady burn that will help you feel full. That's why I recommend protein; your mileage may vary. Eat whatever makes you feel full, so long as you can hit 1500 calories (or whatever). Drink lots of hotdog water if that's what works for you; just keep the calories within bounds.

Wait, isn't this just the Atkins Diet?

NO! The Atkins Diet is terrible. It holds that you can lose weight by eating lots of fat and cutting out carbs, which will then force your body to start turning some of your fat into "ketone bodies", an alternative energy source to glucose. The process is known as "ketosis", and it is an adaptation your body turns to only under genuine hardship, and it's rough on your body. I am recommending a more direct approach: cut back on the calories, and do what it takes to keep from feeling hungry and weak (which is where the protein comes in). Again, for me it's working extremely well.

A person should get 20 to 50 grams of carbs a day to keep from going into ketosis; that's one or two slices of bread. So at least a little bread should make it into your diet. I advocate conventional rules of nutrition -- just fewer calories, and extra protein for hunger management (assuming protein is what keeps hunger away for you, as it does for me).

What are some good protein sources?

Here are some protein sources to turn to. Each of these portion sizes is 250 calories, so you could do six of these a day, in whatever combinations or schedules you prefer:

12 oz canned tuna (55g protein)

15 egg whites (54g protein) - this is ridiculous but technically you could do this

1/2 cup wheat gluten (46g protein) - mix with water and spices and bake it at 350 degrees, and you get a loaf of ... something. Get it from Amazon and it's both a good bargain and a very efficient way to get your protein.

3 oz mozzarella cheese, part skim (~22g protein; varies by brand and how much skim)

1 cup cooked lentils (20g protein) - by far your cheapest option per serving, and the high fiber levels may help you feel full.

A lot of lunchmeats fit nicely into this range too.

Protein supplements too, right?

Sure, why not. Some taste better than others, and some of them have no taste at all. Throw a scoop in whatever you're cooking, and recalculate the numbers accordingly.

Okay, it's not Atkins, but you still have to cut down on bread, right?

Well yes. A slice of wheat bread is something like 70 calories and 3.5g of protein, which is far heavier on the calories than I like (see my ten-to-one rule below). That doesn't mean cutting bread out altogether -- again, a slice or two a day is necessary to keep from going into ketosis -- but it does mean cutting down on it significantly.

That said, I have discovered a pretty good workaround: Kodiak Cakes Power Cakes. At 190 calories and 14g of protein, that's impressively close to my ten-to-one rule for a bread product. So what I do is use my silicone burger mold to bake pancakes (350 degrees, 20 minutes) and use them as slices of bread. It's not exactly normal bread but it works well enough for sandwiches.

You mentioned fiber in passing; can you elaborate?

If you aren't finding that high protein sources are doing it for you, maybe try some high fiber foods. Conventional wisdom is that fiber can make you feel full for a long time because it slows down digestion of carbs, but as I haven't actually tried a high-fiber diet, I can't attest to that. This site exists because I want to share what has actually worked for me, and what has worked for me is protein. But if it doesn't work for you, fiber might be a workable substitute.

Personally I'm skeptical about fiber, if all it's doing is tricking your body. Protein, at least, provides amino acids that go to building tissue. Fiber passes through your body undigested.

I do find that lentils are more filling at 20g than some of the higher protein options, so maybe there's something to the protein / fiber combination. (My go-to foods are pork and yogurt, but I've tried all the other options at least a little. Except for the 15 egg whites at one sitting. This isn't the Cool Hand Luke Diet.)

What sort of snacks can you do?

I do a lot of diet beverages and sugar-free Jello. And on days when I haven't reached 1500 calories, I might eat something that's delicious but bad for me.

It sounds like I'm going to have to count calories.

Yeah, you will. That sounds like a pain, but remember: you got heavy exactly because you took in more calories than you were expending. To fix the problem, you'll need to start paying attention to how many calories, so you can figure out best options.

Is there an easy way to spot foods that will give me the protein I need?

I use a ten-to-one rule of thumb. The two numbers I look at on a food are the calories and the grams of protein, and ideally the calories will be no more than ten times the protein. Not all foods will pass that test, but it's what I aim for.

For example, a MorningStar Garden Veggie Burger is 170 calories and 16g of protein. The calories are a little more than ten times the protein, but it will probably do. On the other hand, two slices of wheat bread are typically something like 140 calories and 7g of protein ... the calories are 20 times the protein, which is way out of range. You can still eat wheat bread if you so desire, but understand that it won't be very filling and so you may end up exceeding your daily calorie count. (HOWEVER, put something high-protein / low-calorie on your bread -- say, turkey lunchmeat (90 calories / 16g protein) -- and the overall numbers get into the desired range, with 230 calories / 23g protein.)

What about fruits and vegetables?

Sure, they're good for you! Also there's a lot of fiber, and again, that might help with satiety. But bear in mind that fruits can be calorie-rich too, so you'll need to count calories. Salad dressings can also turn otherwise-healthy salads into gastronomic abominations, so be mindful of the numbers.

Are there any foods that are forbidden?

No, but bear in mind that calories add up, and 1500 calories isn't much to work with. You'll quickly find you need to choose your calories strategically.

That list of high protein foods looks boring.

This is where it's worth learning to cook just a little. Lentils are very good with tomatoes and basil, and there are a thousand lentil chili recipes online. Ground pork / turkey / chicken can be turned into sausage just by adding spices. Wheat gluten can be fashioned into pseudo-meat. Chicken paprikash, if made with fat-free sour cream and TVP, is pretty nutritious (the recipe posted there would result in seven servings of roughly 250 calories and 35g of protein, assuming 2 cups of TVP). Italian sausage plus mozzarella cheese plus tomatoes is delicious.

Throw some numbers at me.

Some numbers:

A pound of fat is 3500 calories; it takes a deficit of 3500 calories to burn a pound of fat.

The average healthy woman burns around 2000 calories a day just by living; for healthy men it's more like 2500 calories. Those numbers go up if you're heavy. (There are calculators online for this, where you can enter your height / weight / gender / age; but I don't know which ones are most trustworthy, so I leave it to you to investigate.)

A 500 calorie deficit a day means 3500 calories a week, or 1 pound of weight loss a week.

A 1000 calorie deficit means losing 2 pounds a week. Much more than that is probably unsustainable, as I see it.

2 pounds a week doesn't sound like much. How about if I phrase it as 100 pounds a year? Sounds a lot better that way.

1g of carbs is 4 calories. 1g of protein is 4 calories. 1g of alcohol is 7 calories. 1g of fat is 9 calories. (Not all sources agree exactly but those are easy numbers to work with. Still, for laughs, take a look at foods around your house and see if you can calculate total calories from these numbers. They work pretty well.)

Are there any downsides to this?

I miss a lot of sandwiches: I find that I can't fit much bread into my diet (70 calories per slice of white bread), and there are days I could really go for a salami sandwich. Also, I miss eating according to whim; it gets a little old sometimes, planning my food and trying to calculate whether mozzarella sticks are going to put me over my total.

But the compensations are more than worth it. Feeling better about myself, having more energy, being able to walk longer distances, not wondering exactly how disgusting of a blob I will be when I finally ruin my body altogether ... it sure is nice to see a better future. Also, I sleep better, and I haven't awoken with heartburn in months. I sure don't miss that.

What about exercise? Why no exercise?

I said no exercise program.

Exercise is very important to overall health, and I strongly recommend exercise to people in general. HOWEVER -- if the biggest problem in your life is weight, then you need to make losing weight your priority. And unfortunately, for as valuable as exercise is, exercise puts demands on your body that run exactly counter to weight loss. Exercise requires increased caloric intake for recovery and building muscle, while weight loss requires reduced caloric intake. And exercise doesn't even burn up that many calories ... but it does make you hungry.

Almost all weight loss regimens tell you to exercise, but as far as I'm concerned, they're instructing you to sabotage your own weight loss efforts. And that makes me angry. Millions of people are trying to get themselves healthy and are being told to do so by methods that cannot work. No wonder such a small percentage of people lose weight! No wonder people give up: you work your ass off trying to work your ass off and you get nowhere ... because people have told you to undermine your own efforts.

So, I am recommending against exercise programs, if losing weight is your top priority. That said, as the pounds come off, you'll almost certainly find yourself becoming more active; a certain amount of exercise will find its way into your life just because you can do more. You'll take on more projects, you'll do more things, and isn't that kind of the point? Do that extra walking, go up those stairs, and so on -- ease it into your life. But making a point of pushing yourself to exhaustion is just counterproductive.

Or depending on your situation, you can balance weight loss and exercise, and do one OR the other at any given time. For example, focus on weight loss during the bad weather months, and commit to exercise during nice weather. Admit it, you weren't going to go the gym in winter anyway.

If you're still skeptical, look up the numbers on how many calories you burn with any given exercise, and then figure out how much exercise it would take to burn 3500 calories. That's just a single pound of fat. For example, walking a mile will burn 120 calories, give or take. So you'd have to walk something like 30 miles just to lose a pound. How many days will it take you to walk 30 miles (and remember, you're not allowed to compensate by eating more)? I can lose a pound in just a few days through diet alone; diet wins. (Please, don't tell me about Jared Fogle: no way did he lose weight by walking a couple miles and then eating 500 calories of bread. There's something sketchy about that guy.)

So what is the end game? What happens when you stop dieting?

That is something of a trick question, because it looks like diet management is going to be part of my life from now on. The question is more, what will my life look like when I'm no longer doing only 1500 calories a day? Well, I'll probably bump it up to 2500 calories, but I'll still be mindful of what I eat. There will be more sandwiches in my life, but within caloric limits. Also more deliberate exercise; I enjoy bicycling, and look forward to it not being an exhausting process.